Let the vain sex dream on; the empire comes from us, And had they common generosity,
They would not use us thus.
Well-though you've rais'd her to this high degree, Ourselves are rais'd as well as she :
And, spite of all that they or you can do, 'Tis pride and happiness enough to me, Still to be of the same exalted sex with you.
Alas, how fleeting and how vain,
Is e'en the nobler man, our learning and our wit!
I sigh whene'er I think of it :
As at the closing of an unhappy scene
Of some great king and conqueror's death,
When the sad melancholy Muse
Stays but to catch his utmost breath.
I grieve, this nobler work most happily begun,
So quickly and so wonderfully carry'd on,
May fall at last to interest, folly, and abuse.
There is a noontide in our lives,
Which still the sooner it arrives,
Although we boast our winter sun looks bright, And foolishly are glad to see it at its height, Yet so much sooner comes the long and gloomy night. No conquest ever yet begun,
And by one mighty hero carried to its height,
E'er flourish'd under a successor or a son;
It lost some mighty pieces through all hands it past, And vanish'd to an empty title in the last.
For, when the animating mind is fled
(Which nature never can retain,
Nor e'er call back again)
The body, though gigantic, lies all cold and dead.
And thus undoubtedly 'twill fare
With what unhappy men shall dare
To be successors to these great unknown,
On Learning's high-establish'd throne.
Censure, and Pedantry, and Pride,
Numberless nations, stretching far and wide,
Shall (I foresee it) soon with Gothic swarms come forth From Ignorance's universal North,
And with blind rage break all this peaceful government: Yet shall these traces of your wit remain,
Like a just map, to tell the vast extent
Of conquest in your short and happy reign;
And to all future mankind shew
How strange a paradox is true,
That men who liv'd and died without a name Are the chief heroes in the sacred list of fame.
WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 1693.
THRICE, with a prophet's voice and prophet's pow'r,
The Muse was called in a poetic hour,
And insolently thrice, the slighted maid
Dared to suspend her unregarded aid;
Then with that grief we form in spirits divine
Pleads for her own neglect, and thus reproaches mine:
Once highly honour'd! False is the pretence
You make to truth, retreat, and innocence;
Who, to pollute my shades, bring'st with thee down
The most ungen'rous vices of the town;
Ne'er sprung a youth from out this isle before
I once esteem'd, and lov'd, and favour'd more,
Nor ever maid endured such courtlike scorn,
So much in mode, so very city-born;
"Tis with a foul design the muse you send,
Like a cast mistress to your wicked friend;
But find some new address, some fresh deceit,
Nor practise such an antiquated cheat;
These are the beaten methods of the stews,
Stale forms of course, all mean deceivers use,
Who barbarously think to 'scape reproach,
By prostituting her they first debauch.
Thus did the Muse severe unkindly blame
This off'ring long design'd to Congreve's fame;
First chid the zeal as unpoetic fire,
Which soon his merit forced her to inspire;
Then call this verse, that speaks her largest aid,
The greatest compliment she ever made,
And wisely judge, no pow'r beneath divine
Could leap the bounds which part your world and mine; For, youth, believe, to you unseen, is fix'd
A mighty gulf unpassable betwixt.
Nor tax the goddess of a mean design
To praise your parts by publishing of mine;
That be my thought when some large bulky writ
Shows in the front the ambition of my wit;
There to surmount what bears me up, and sing
Like the victorious wren perch'd on the eagle's wing;
This could I do, and proudly o'er him tower,
Were my desires but heighten'd to my power.
Godlike the force of my young Congreve's bays,
Soft'ning the muse's thunder into praise;
Sent to assist an old unvanquish'd pride
That looks with scorn on half mankind beside;
A pride that well suspends poor mortals' fate,
Gets between them and my resentment's weight,
Stands in the gap 'twixt me and wretched men,
T'avert th' impending judgments of my pen.
Thus I look down with mercy on the age,
By hopes my Congreve will reform the stage;
For never did poetic mine before
Produce a richer vein or cleaner ore;
The bullion stamp'd in your refining mind
Serves by retail to furnish half mankind.
With indignation I behold your wit
Forced on me, crack'd, and clipp'd, and counterfeit,
By vile pretenders, who a stock maintain
From broken scraps and filings of your brain.
Through native dross your share is hardly known,
And by short views mistook for all their own;
So small the gain those from your wit do reap,
Who blend it into folly's larger heap,
Like the sun's scatter'd beams which loosely pass,
When some rough hand breaks the assembling glass.
Yet want your critics no just cause to rail, “
Since knaves are ne'er obliged for what they steal.
These pad on wit's high road, and suits maintain
With those they rob, by what their trade does gain.
Thus censure seems that fiery froth which breeds
O'er the sun's face, and from his heat proceeds,
Crusts o'er the day, shadowing its parent beam
As ancient nature's modern masters dream;
This bids some curious praters here below
Call Titan sick, because their sight is so;
And well, methinks, does this allusion fit
To scribblers, and the god of light and wit;
Those who by wild delusions entertain
A lust of rhyming for a poet's vein,
Raise envy's clouds to leave themselves in night,
But can no more obscure my Congreve's light
Than swarms of gnats, that wanton in a ray
Which gave them birth, can rob the world of day.
What northern hive pour'd out these foes to wit?
Whence came these Goths to overrun the pit?
How would you blush the shameful birth to hear
Of those you so ignobly stoop to fear;
For, ill to them, long have I travell'd since
Round all the circles of impertinence,
Search'd in the nest where every worm did lie
Before it grew a city butterfly;
I'm sure I found them other kind of things
Than those with backs of silk and golden wings;
A search, no doubt, as curious and as wise
As virtuosoes' in dissecting flies;
For, could you think; the fiercest foes you dread,
And court in prologues, all are country bred;
Bred in my scene, and for the poet's sins
Adjourn'd from tops and grammar to the inns;
Those beds of dung, where schoolboys sprout up beaus
Far sooner than the nobler mushroom grows:
These are the lords of the poetic schools,
Who preach the saucy pedantry of rules;
Those pow'rs the critics, who may boast the odds
O'er Nile, with all its wilderness of gods;
Nor could the nations kneel to viler shapes,
Which worship'd cats, and sacrificed to apes;
And can you think the wise forbear to laugh
At the warm zeal that breeds this golden calf?
Haply you judge these lines severely writ
Against the proud usurpers of the pit;
Stay while I tell my story, short, and true;
To draw conclusions shall be left to you;
Nor need I ramble far to force a rule,
But lay the scene just here at Farnham school.
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